D&D 5E Why the claim of combat and class balance between the classes is mainly a forum issue. (In my opinion)

[Bedrockgames]

Meh. At absolute worst you might be one level behind. Hrmmmm. Give up one level of thief and gain X levels of another class. Like I said, the balance issues in Second are pretty glaring.

It depended on the level and class, but generally i believe you could be 1-4 levels behind i believe. A thief who has 10th level straight for example has something like thief 7, and wizard 8. I do think there were issues with multiclassing in 2E (though you didn't have class dipping problems like 3E), but it isn't as bad as you make it out to be here in my opinion. And there are still the level caps.

I do agree third editino you saw more varied characters mechanically. The strength of 3e was its customizeability. But i also think that was a source of much of its imbalance. My point was never that third edition isn't good or that it is totally broken, just that it presented more challenge issues for me than 2E. My original statement on this subject was i felt in terms of balance, 2E was closer to what i prefer, 3E had potential issues, and 4e was too balanced for my taste. That said i don't deny 2E could be improved, though given you are a fan of the 4e design approach and i am not, i have a ling we would disagree on how best to improve 2E (one think i know i would do is only allow two weapon fighting for rangers, and take out the expansion of specialization to paladins and rangers in the complete boook). Would also make the two weapon fighting penalty much harder to eliminate. Because the penalty does serve as a balancer when it is actually in place. The problem was stuff like ambidexterity.

 

[Bedrockgames]

This made me go and check my 2nd ed PHB.

The fighter description presents Wp Spec as a special thing that only fighters (not paladins and rangers) can get, and says its the player's choice.

Then the proficiency chapter says (i) that it's like wizard specialisation (which is presented as a player choice) and that it's an optional rule (maybe even expressly meaning - I didn't look at that aspect) implying that it's the GM's choice.

In other words, I think it's a bit confused in the presentation.

I think the entry in the proficiency chapter and actual specialization entry trumps the failure to mention it being optional in the player section. But the prohibition against rangers and paladins taking weapon specialization was essentially revoked in the complete fighter (i think it was a bad idea to revoke it, but the did).

2E is much better organized than 1E, but still not as good as later books in that respect. A lot of rules are buried or hard to find. It wasnt uncommon to have to check a couple of different sections handling the same rule to get a complete picture. Also, some of th entries were vague or didn't give examples and that led to a lot of differing interpretations from table to table, whichotent ally had a large impact on balance.

 

[Neonchameleon]

4E starting characters were supposed to be already experienced adventurers according to marketing. I think 1st level in 4E was meant to represent something like 3rd level in older editions, but I am not sure about that one.

In AD&D (1e) the first level fighter was supposedly a veteran. And from memory the average first level wizard was in their 30s. Combat rounds also represented a minute, meaning that it took a lot of hacking to kill anyone (certainly longer than it does in 4e).

 

[sheadunne]

I do agree third edition you saw more varied characters mechanically. The strength of 3e was its customizeability. But i also think that was a source of much of its imbalance. My point was never that third edition isn't good or that it is totally broken, just that it presented more challenge issues for me than 2E. My original statement on this subject was i felt in terms of balance, 2E was closer to what i prefer, 3E had potential issues, and 4e was too balanced for my taste. That said i don't deny 2E could be improved, though given you are a fan of the 4e design approach and i am not, i have a ling we would disagree on how best to improve 2E (one think i know i would do is only allow two weapon fighting for rangers, and take out the expansion of specialization to paladins and rangers in the complete book). Would also make the two weapon fighting penalty much harder to eliminate. Because the penalty does serve as a balancer when it is actually in place. The problem was stuff like ambidexterity.

I think that's true with anyone's preferred edition. It's been decades since i played 2e and I wouldn't presume to know how to tweak it anymore. The same with me for 4e. PF isn't how I would have tweaked 3x which leaves me to tweak 3x myself. In my opinion, that's a good thing. When we talk across editions it's never very fruitful except to point out ways to tweak our preferred edition, although we tend to instantly reject any tweaks to our current edition from posters if they bring up other editions, even though we might ourselves borrow from those editions to improve our own preferred edition. We're defensive as if ideas contained in other editions present a threat to our own games. Which isn't really true at all (aside from the possible decrease in player pool available). Your discussion of 2e is just as valuable, if not more so, than discussions focused around my own preferred edition. The same is true of those who post on 4e or 1e (or any other RPG for that matter).

Okay, a lot of that didn't have much to do directly with your post, but it was a good post so I thought I'd expand on it (the part about customizing our own preferred editions).

 

[Bluenose]

It depended on the level and class, but generally i believe you could be 1-4 levels behind i believe. A thief who has 10th level straight for example has something like thief 7, and wizard 8. I do think there were issues with multiclassing in 2E (though you didn't have class dipping problems like 3E), but it isn't as bad as you make it out to be here in my opinion. And there are still the level caps.

10th level tThief requires 160,000XP. Split in a multiclass that gets you Thief 8/Mage 7. At 11th level it's Thief 9/Wizard 8, very close to 9/9. It gets worse as the levels get higher - a 7th level Thief would multiclass as Th6/M5, while a Thief 20 would be T15/M13. The penalty if your alternative was single class Mage is noticeably smaller.

 

[Bedrockgames]

10th level tThief requires 160,000XP. Split in a multiclass that gets you Thief 8/Mage 7. At 11th level it's Thief 9/Wizard 8, very close to 9/9. It gets worse as the levels get higher - a 7th level Thief would multiclass as Th6/M5, while a Thief 20 would be T15/M13. The penalty if your alternative was single class Mage is noticeably smaller.

You are right, I inversed the levels in my OP. But I the level difference is still there. My point was it wasn't a single level of distance. By taking thief you do get to higher levels faster than if you multi class. But I never said multiclassing was free of balance issues. I don't think it is possible to get to T15/M13 using multiclassing because of level caps (best an elf can do is T12/M15 ( unless you use the optional Exceeding Level Limits rule). So you will never be a 20 the level Mage of thief if you go that route. Which does matter if you want to reach your peak ( particularly as a wizard since you can't get 8th or 9th level spells).

 

[Cadence]

This made me go and check my 2nd ed PHB.

Yeah, I had completely forgotten it was listed as optional. I want to say we always played using it.

What super maxed out? I have an 18 str fighter.

It's not like I've cross referenced three different splats and taken some weird off race from Dragon magazine. I'm using the PHB and a single splat that most people agree is perfectly fine for the game.

That still puts you in the top 10% of fighters rolled using best 3 of 4d6 arranged. I'm guessing the view of skills and powers depends a lot on the particular group - it came out half way through the life of the game and I don't remember the groups I played with using it (if we did, the DM probably would have been more selective in which were allowed if someone had cranked those numbers).

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After a long stretch of 3/3.5/PF, going back and playing a 1e game last year and cranking through the 2e numbers for this really makes me dislike the way bonuses for having high ability scores worked back then. Even moreso when combined with rolling for stats. I don't remember every worrying about it that much back when we were actually playing B/X, 1e, 2e though...

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Random other comments tying into previous posts...
Yay level titles! https://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4alum/20090206
(or may not... if all 1st level fighters are veterans, do all 3rd level fighters use swords?)
Boo level limits! http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/rants/demihumanlevellimits.html and http://grognardia.blogspot.com/2009/09/level-limits.html

 

[Hussar]

/snip


I don't remember them having anything for fighters... was it a kit or something that was broken?

Oh, sorry, wasn't actually referring to fighters, just making over the top, super powered characters. Hrm, let's take a cleric that can now cast magic user spells as cleric spells... plus wear armour and get d8 for HP. Oh, yeah, that's not over powered at all.

But on the 18 Str thing. Sure, we probably cheated. But, honestly, of the characters you saw played in 2e, how many didn't have an 18 in their prime stat, compared to the number who did? I'm going to say that most did. Probably because people cheated. I seem to recall a house rule, borrowed from Basic D&D which allowed 2:1 trading of stats too. That would do it.

 

[GreyLord]

But on the 18 Str thing. Sure, we probably cheated. But, honestly, of the characters you saw played in 2e, how many didn't have an 18 in their prime stat, compared to the number who did?

A Majority?

This is personal experience of course. Most didn't even have an 18 at first, at least naturally rolled. Later on after finding things like Manuals and other items...those scores could increase.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Oh, sorry, wasn't actually referring to fighters, just making over the top, super powered characters. Hrm, let's take a cleric that can now cast magic user spells as cleric spells... plus wear armour and get d8 for HP. Oh, yeah, that's not over powered at all.

that is a good point, I just misunderstood.

But on the 18 Str thing. Sure, we probably cheated. But, honestly, of the characters you saw played in 2e, how many didn't have an 18 in their prime stat, compared to the number who did? I'm going to say that most did. Probably because people cheated. I seem to recall a house rule, borrowed from Basic D&D which allowed 2:1 trading of stats too. That would do it.

A Majority?

This is personal experience of course. Most didn't even have an 18 at first, at least naturally rolled. Later on after finding things like Manuals and other items...those scores could increase.

I would say 1 in 5 characters had an 18, and a lot more of those ended up going into a more spell casters...